Google Analytics, huh?
I've never really looked at Google Analytics before today, but was enticed to do so by reading a post on the blog of Shoemoney. So, I logged into Analytics, really easy as I already use Gmail all the time (and you can use the same login username and password).
Took me 2 minutes to set up the account and find the code which I had to paste into the Wordpress template. All seems to be working well.
I'm guessing the Analytics is not real-time, but probably crunches all the data once a day - so everything that happens today on the blog should be reflected in tomorrows stats. I guess. Well, I hope so, as nowt is showing in my analytics reporting as yet.
Should be interesting to learn from the Stats of this blog, just how well the blog is (or not).
I do also use a service called `My Blog Log` which is very interesting to see where readers are coming from and where they are going to. Hopefully both will work in harmony, we shall see.
Comment by The Gent — January 5, 2007 @ 7:08 pm
For real-time stats I think it's impossible to find fault with the impressive statcounter. Google Analytics goes deeper but does not, as you so rightly think, operate in real-time. Google Analytics does update more regularly than once a day though.
Comment by Chance — January 5, 2007 @ 10:08 pm
I use Google Analytics on Portal Labs, jcCommerce, and a few other sites I manage.
They crunch numbers on the "whenever google gets around to it" schedule- its not really once a day, but its not real time by any means. All in all, I liked the service when it was Urchin better.
Also, I get consistently lower stats through Analytics than with on-server stats tools like AWStats (my favorite) or even my raw apache logs. I suspect that their system times out fairly quick to avoid annoying long page loads.
I pretty much only use it for traffic funnels / conversion tracking- and the geo-map overlay is kinda nice- but I use AWStats for actual unique/visits/pageviews.
It works well with AdWords campaigns too, but I have limited experience and I'll probably post about it once we start PL's SEM campaign.
Comment by Lea — January 6, 2007 @ 3:09 pm
It seems to run around 4 - 6 hours behind real time
Comment by Will — January 6, 2007 @ 4:02 pm
I've used Urchin in the past, but found that it showed quite different stats from when I switched a website over to AWStats and Webalizer. Still, the other detailed information it provided was useful.
I'm not so keen on using GA, though. It's still a bit too Big Brother-ish to me and that's not a reference to anything involving Dirk Benedict.
Comment by burt — January 9, 2007 @ 12:56 pm
It seems to be working great. It's interesting to see countries where readers come from. Hello to you if you are in Puerto Rico, Serbia, Turkey, New Zealand and China.